White-male existential panic demonstrates again that the Republican Party’s jingoistic, red, white and blue chest-thumping is empty marketing. The rule of law, democracy, small-government and more — all disposable in the name of retaining White, male, minority power.
I’m reminded of one Keith Olbermann commentary (I cannot locate) in which he walked through examples of how under the Bush II administration the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights had been discarded, with only the <strike>Second</strike> Third Amendment surviving.
It turns out that even the GOP’s “party of business” branding was a lie. Catherine Rampell explains at the Washington Post:
Thanks to President Biden’s vaccine mandate for employers — and the GOP’s response — Democrats have taken over the mantle of the pro-business, pro-economy, pro-growth party.
It is Democrats, after all, who have a plan to get the economy humming again, by controlling the coronavirus and thereby making it safe for Americans to work, shop, attend school and otherwise resume their pre-pandemic economic lives.
For the past decade, voters have usually said they trusted Republicans more than Democrats on the economy. This was a triumph of propaganda over experience, given how much better the economy has generally performed under Democratic presidents, on nearly every major metric — jobs, output growth, productivity, stock prices. To be fair, Democrats’ superior economic record to date has been primarily due to luck. But right now, Democrats deserve Americans’ economic faith because they are the only — yes, only — party actively working to help the economy recover from covid-19.
We might have kicked the virus to the curb by now and returned to some semblance of normal by voluntarily adopting “the cheapest, most effective measure available”
— vaccination — to put the pandemic behind us. But no.
The GOP could not bear the thought of allowing a Democratic president party that Republican leaders and its base reject as illegitimate (because in their minds no Democrat is legitimate) to preside over such a recovery, even at the cost of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of American additional lives. Even among Republican voters.Rampell acknowledges the latter:
Some have actively discouraged people from getting vaccinated, amplified conspiracy theories, and (in places including Florida and Texas) obstructed private companies from taking measures to reduce the spread of covid-19 within their own workplaces. These efforts, coupled with the spread of the more transmissible delta variant, have led to increased hospitalizations and deaths and slower job growth.
Some prominent Republicans, such as Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, have openly cheered on the carnage. Nevermind that GOP voters appear to be dying in higher numbers as a result.
Using existing authorities over federal employees and large, private companies (via OSHA), President Biden last week announced vaccination requirements for workers to ensure safe working environments. Reuters found large businesses in favor. They want to get back to normal. They want their employees and their customers back. Rampell cites more examples.
“This will come as a relief to the business community, to have an order that requires all of them to move together,” the CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership told the Post.
Biden’s rule doesn’t yet exist, but already GOP officials have pledged to challenge it in court. They claim they want to protect the economy from tyrannical government intervention. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), for instance, denounced Biden’s order as “an assault on private businesses.” This is pretty rich coming from Abbott, who has similarly “assaulted” private businesses — in his case, by forbidding firms that receive any public funds from implementing vaccine mandates.
As the Trump presidency wore on and even after, press critics damned the mainstream press for giving oxygen to the man of 30,000 lies. Nothing Trump says is credible, yet the press treats it as news. The GOP’s pro-America, pro-business branding is just as empty of substance as Trump’s. It would be refereshing to see the press acknowledge that and stop treating GOP propaganda as credible.
Update: A reader reminds me it was the Third Amendment surviving, per Olbermann in 2006. TW provided a transcript link.